This week, we have witnessed the first scandal of the Obama Administration-to-be. Or so say the media.
Barack has invited evangelical pastor Reverend Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration. Rick Warren is one of the religious leaders who give a powerful voice to the activists of the religious far-right which has supported the Republican party for years, and the Bush Administration in particular.
This move by Obama can be seen as a brilliant one. Keep your friends close and you enemies closer. By inviting someone representing the very people who hate him the most, those who call him a Socialist Muslim terrorist who eats babies alive for breakfast, Obama is sending a signal that he won't be the President of the people who voted for him only. He reaches across the ideological divide. He explains his move by repeating his mantra: "We can disagree without being disagreeable."
Warren, among other negative and positive -- he notably encourages Christians to confront problems like AIDS and climate change -- characteristics, is anti-abortion and anti-gay, which makes his participation at the inauguration of Obama very controversial. The gay community, in particular, is very upset.
The anger of the gay community is very understandable. Warren -- whose church refuses non-repentant gay people and sponsors programs to cure gay people -- equates gay marriage to incest, pedophilia and polygamy. This kind of statement is clearly unacceptable and shocking.
After the shameful passage of Proposition 8 in California, a proposition banning same-sex marriage a few months after it had been made legal by the California Supreme Court, many gay people already feel that their fellow citizens are doing everything they can to deprive them of the right of the pursuit of happiness guaranteed by the Declaration of Independence.
After the announcement of Warren's presence at the inauguration of the President they overwhelmingly supported, they understandably feel betrayed.
However, there is one aspect of the whole thing which I think should be very controversial but that the media have not mentioned at all. Not even the very liberal media like MSNBC.
What in the world is a religious leader doing at the inauguration of the President of the United States?
Even a representative of an activist group called Association for the Separation of Church and State has protested against the participation of Warren on the grounds of his homophobia but has never mentioned that this should not even be an issue, since no religious leader should be praying the Lord at the inauguration of the President.
I have mentioned to a friend of mine who happens to be a quite liberal Southern Baptist pastor that it seems strange to me that the separation of church and state does not guarantee that religious leaders will not participate in the inauguration ceremony. He replied, That's the American tradition. Just like "In God We Trust" stamped on the banknotes. It's ridiculous.
It is a tradition indeed. It is so ingrained that it is not even questioned when an anti-gay pastor is invited to give the invocation at the inauguration of the new President. It is so deeply rooted in American society that people will tell you that this is what the Founding Fathers wanted. They simply ignore that most of the Founding Fathers were a bunch of atheists disguised as deists.
When tradition keeps people into such apathy, it is time indeed for change.
Obama's move is a bold one indeed, and I am pretty sure that he will regain the favors of the gay community by other bold moves. After the Warren participation was announced, Barack declared at a press conference that he was "a fierce advocate of equality of rights for the gay community." I do not think that any president, or any major candidate had declared such a thing before.
However, I wish Barack had made an even bolder move, by not including any religious act in his inauguration ceremony.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Monday, December 15, 2008
I hope Obama is going to win this election
I am very nervous today. For the last month and a half, I thought we were safe, I thought Barack had won the election, but I -- as well as approximately everyone else -- had just forgotten one little detail.
The vote that took place on November 4 did not count for anything.
The real vote takes place today, on December the 15th, or, as the Constitution so clearly puts it, on the first Monday after the second Wednesday of the third December month after the September month of the year two years before Election Year (I hope I am getting that right).
Today, the Electors meet in the capitols of their respective states and cast their ballot. Presumably, they will cast it for the candidate that the people of their state voted for, but they do not have to. They can cast it for whoever they want, or not cast it at all.
This is the Electoral College, a very complicated electoral system that leaves even most American voters confused. Every year I teach the American Presidency, I have to learn it again before my class on the American electoral system. Every year, one student asks one question I don't have the answer to.
As a simplistic reminder, here is what it boils down to.
The American voters do not elect their president directly. They elect a list -- it is really called a slate -- of Electors. This year, they chose either the list for Obama, or the list for McCain. In Oklahoma for example, they chose the list for McCain. On the list in Oklahoma, there are seven Electors, which equals the number of congresspeople Oklahoma has in Washington (5 representatives and 2 senators). Today, these seven Electors meet in the capitol in Oklahoma City and presumably cast their ballot for McCain. They will be 7 of the 173 Electoral votes won by McCain.
At the end of the day, 538 ballots will be cast through the nation. They will be counted by the Congress in joint session on January 6.
Why such a system in "the best democracy in the whole universe"?
Well, because the Founding Fathers did not trust the people back in 1787. The US government was doing so poorly under the first constitution, the Articles of Confederation, that many people started to feel nostalgic of the British tyranny. So to make sure elections would go as planned, the Founding Fathers made sure that people who knew better would cast the final votes, the votes that counted.
Of course, that is not the official explanation. The official explanation is that with this system, small states, with a small population, can have a weight in the elections.
Of course, when we see what actually happens during a campaign, this explanation is not very convincing. Small states never see any candidate, especially if the polls show that they are very likely to go one side or the other.
Again, let's take Oklahoma as an example. This is a very red state -- the reddest this year -- with only 7 Electoral votes. Because it was very likely Oklahoma would go for McCain, Obama never came to Oklahoma during the campaign. Not only that, but because Oklahoma was a sure state for him, McCain never came either.
In a word, the voters in Oklahoma were taken for granted.
And that is the case of many states.
There is something wrong in "the best democracy in the world."
Now, why such delay between the popular vote (on November 4 this year), the Electoral vote (today on December 15) and the inauguration of the President on January the 20th?
Well, because at the time the Constitution was drafted, it took that long to count the ballots and to travel the distances.
Mind you, it can still take time to count the ballots. The results of a Senate race in Minnesota are not yet definitive (that's a whole other story that I will tell in a post I am preparing and which will be entitled "Voting in the Third World").
Today, if we know already who will be the next President, it is because of the advent of communications technology. We know (most of) the results on the day of the popular vote simply because the overwhelming media is omniscient enough to be behind every voter and to know who will be inaugurated almost three months later.
But let us ponder over this for a minute. We know only thanks to the media. Nothing will be official before January 20. But during the whole campaign, John and Sarah told us the media were biased, that Barack was their pet, that they were basically campaigning for him!
What if... what if the media, all this time, were telling us Obama won so that we can get used to the idea of having a Muslim Socialistic terrorist at the head of the "best country on the surface of the earth"?
Once the people is brainwashed into believing that that's okay, then it will be too late to react.
Oh, my gosh, what if they are reading this right now, as I write. They are everywhere, these bloody commies. What if aaaarrrrrrrggggggghhhhhh.............
The vote that took place on November 4 did not count for anything.
The real vote takes place today, on December the 15th, or, as the Constitution so clearly puts it, on the first Monday after the second Wednesday of the third December month after the September month of the year two years before Election Year (I hope I am getting that right).
Today, the Electors meet in the capitols of their respective states and cast their ballot. Presumably, they will cast it for the candidate that the people of their state voted for, but they do not have to. They can cast it for whoever they want, or not cast it at all.
This is the Electoral College, a very complicated electoral system that leaves even most American voters confused. Every year I teach the American Presidency, I have to learn it again before my class on the American electoral system. Every year, one student asks one question I don't have the answer to.
As a simplistic reminder, here is what it boils down to.
The American voters do not elect their president directly. They elect a list -- it is really called a slate -- of Electors. This year, they chose either the list for Obama, or the list for McCain. In Oklahoma for example, they chose the list for McCain. On the list in Oklahoma, there are seven Electors, which equals the number of congresspeople Oklahoma has in Washington (5 representatives and 2 senators). Today, these seven Electors meet in the capitol in Oklahoma City and presumably cast their ballot for McCain. They will be 7 of the 173 Electoral votes won by McCain.
At the end of the day, 538 ballots will be cast through the nation. They will be counted by the Congress in joint session on January 6.
Why such a system in "the best democracy in the whole universe"?
Well, because the Founding Fathers did not trust the people back in 1787. The US government was doing so poorly under the first constitution, the Articles of Confederation, that many people started to feel nostalgic of the British tyranny. So to make sure elections would go as planned, the Founding Fathers made sure that people who knew better would cast the final votes, the votes that counted.
Of course, that is not the official explanation. The official explanation is that with this system, small states, with a small population, can have a weight in the elections.
Of course, when we see what actually happens during a campaign, this explanation is not very convincing. Small states never see any candidate, especially if the polls show that they are very likely to go one side or the other.
Again, let's take Oklahoma as an example. This is a very red state -- the reddest this year -- with only 7 Electoral votes. Because it was very likely Oklahoma would go for McCain, Obama never came to Oklahoma during the campaign. Not only that, but because Oklahoma was a sure state for him, McCain never came either.
In a word, the voters in Oklahoma were taken for granted.
And that is the case of many states.
There is something wrong in "the best democracy in the world."
Now, why such delay between the popular vote (on November 4 this year), the Electoral vote (today on December 15) and the inauguration of the President on January the 20th?
Well, because at the time the Constitution was drafted, it took that long to count the ballots and to travel the distances.
Mind you, it can still take time to count the ballots. The results of a Senate race in Minnesota are not yet definitive (that's a whole other story that I will tell in a post I am preparing and which will be entitled "Voting in the Third World").
Today, if we know already who will be the next President, it is because of the advent of communications technology. We know (most of) the results on the day of the popular vote simply because the overwhelming media is omniscient enough to be behind every voter and to know who will be inaugurated almost three months later.
But let us ponder over this for a minute. We know only thanks to the media. Nothing will be official before January 20. But during the whole campaign, John and Sarah told us the media were biased, that Barack was their pet, that they were basically campaigning for him!
What if... what if the media, all this time, were telling us Obama won so that we can get used to the idea of having a Muslim Socialistic terrorist at the head of the "best country on the surface of the earth"?
Once the people is brainwashed into believing that that's okay, then it will be too late to react.
Oh, my gosh, what if they are reading this right now, as I write. They are everywhere, these bloody commies. What if aaaarrrrrrrggggggghhhhhh.............
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